Flair VS. Rhodes
No it's not 1986! But it is Flair and Rhodes once again, and this time it's a Bunkhouse Match (more accurately - the "wear your crappiest jeans and tattered old plaid shirt while swinging a cowbell until it hits someone in the nose" match).
Ric's kid comes to the ring carrying his dad's replica NWA World Title that he's been carrying for the last few weeks. Dusty hits the ring and just beats on young David. Squashy Squashy.
After 3 or 4 minutes Rhodes nailed Flair in the face with a traditional bunkhouse match foreign object, "Eeeeefff yooooou weeeeeeell". Dusty makes the pin and heads directly to the "pay-winda". Do not pass go, do not return to TNA.
WINNER: Dusty Rhodes
Goldylocks is backstage and interviews America's Most Wanted or more specifically Chris Harris. Goldy is asking why Harris requested a singles match tonight. He goes on a rant about how it isn't a big issue and AMW is still the top team in the business. He just needs to prove something to himself. Once again Harris is showing flashes of a heel turn as he did back in August / September when the angle was that the partners were just too different and couldn't get along.
Kid Kash and Trinity VS. The Amazing Red and Alexis Laree
Most fans remember Kash from ECW, but many have not yet had the opportunity to watch Red in action. He is pure excitement. He's a high spot specialist who at times seems to actually defy gravity and physics.
Tenay makes mention that Laree was trained by Ricky Steamboat and Dory Funk Jr. She looks incredibly nervous in her first "real" match on pay per view.
The match went back and forth, but once again Red and Kash didn't seem to mesh all that well when they faced off. There seem to be some chemistry issues between these two. When either man has been in the ring with anyone else, the matches have been gold. Against each other they have left something to be desired.
The finish came when The Amazing One didn't quite nail the "Infra-Red" sunset flip/ power bomb off the top rope. When both men were down, Trinity hit a nice moonsault on Alexis for the win.
WINNER: Trinity and Kid Kash
Trinity posed after the win and Kash seemed very unimpressed. He grabbed his title and left her there to finish posing.
"Wildcat" Chris Harris VS. D-Lo Brown
Both men move very quickly to start this one off and go through several series of standing switches and reversals. Harris displayed some power by holding Brown up in a vertical suplex for what seemed like an eternity.
D-Lo attempts to his Chris Harris's finisher "The Catatonic" but Harris reverses nicely into a double arm DDT. At one point both men and the ref were down when Glen Gilberti showed up and hit Harris with a Diamond cutter. Brown rolled on The Wildcat to pick up the win. Kudos to Harris. I haven't been a fan of his up until now, but this was clearly his best TNA performance to date.
WINNER: D-Lo Brown
Mike Tenay and Don West recap Jarrett's guitar shot on Watts from earlier in the evening. West blows a gasket promoting a "MAJOR" announcement on next week's show regarding NASCAR. HeeeeeHaw. And now we go to our main event.
The S&M Match"Fallen Angel" Christopher Daniels, "Prime Time" Elix Skipper (TNA Tag Team Champions) and The Harris Brothers VS. Brian Lee, Slash, The Sandman and Perry Saturn.
When Sandman is introduced he downs a beer and goes to one of his old ECW gimmicks where he crushed the can against his head until he bled.
West: "Well we always said he beats to a different drum". Whatever Don.
Saturn appears to be in good shape and even more heavily tattooed than he was during his WWA stint just a couple short months ago. Unfortunately he hasn't regained any of his pre-WWE magic and still appears to wander slowly through the ring and take long rests. He did throw a ton of T-bone suplexes, but other than that didn't add very much to the program.
Update: The Harris Brothers STILL stink. No news there. They are absolutely painful to watch. I almost feel sorry for Daniels and Skipper. There was a cut away where Sandman (outside the ring) was choking one of the twins with a Singapore cane ñ but the big baldy was caught on camera turning his head right around and talking calmly to the Sandman. Probably something like, "Did you save a can for me?" or "Dang, rasslin's hard, ain't it".
As expected there was plenty of juice in this one. I believe everyone bled except Saturn. There were a couple of very nice spots by the tag team champions, but that's about it for redeeming qualities here.
The match ended when Ron Killings (who apparently turned heel last week when he jumped his pal Jarrett) came to the ring with the 6'10" 500 pounder formerly known as Mabel / Viscera. They attack S.E.X. Mabel hit a gigantic (duh) sit out power bomb on Daniels allowing Perry Saturn to pick up the win.
WINNERS: Saturn, Sandman, Lee and Slash
After the match Gilberti and other members of S.E.X. crashed the ring to attack the Church. A huge brawl ensues and eventually D-Lo and Jeff Jarrett make their way back to the ring. They scream at each other then turn away. That's when babyface Double J decided to clobber Brown with a chair shot to the head. We fade to black. Goodnight folks - tip your waitress and try the veal.
ANALYSIS:
WAY too much babbling and yapping this week. I assure you folks, this isn't what TNA has been all about, and quite frankly I'm somewhat surprised by this weeks installment. The first match of the night between Styles and Sanders turned out to be the best. Chris Harris turned in a very respectable performance and made a new fan out of this viewer.
Here's hoping that the Jarretts and russo get their act together backstage and next week's program resembles more of what TNA fans have become accustomed to.
OVERALL RATING: 3.5 out of 10

Donnie Abreu has been a wrestling journalist for eight years and is the co-founder of IceCold Media (http://www.icecoldmedia.com). Visit IceCold Media for all your custom media design needs. Mention that you read Donnie's column on SLAM! and receive a 20% discount!

Jarrett grabbed the mic and called out Ron Killings, S.E.X., Raven or anyone else that wanted a piece of him.

That's when D-Lo Brown showed up. D-Lo claims Jeff is ducking him. Wow, three weeks and he's ticked off that he hasn't received a World Title shot. D-Lo announced he has a match tonight with Chris Harris, but wants Jarrett after defeating the Wildcat.

Jarrett accepts the challenge and tells him to relax just because he was "dicked around by the WWE for seven years" he shouldn't expect the same here.

S.E.X. music hits and Gilberti comes to the ring with the Harris twins. Gilberti plays mind games with Brown saying that Raven is the #1 contender and Jarrett had no plans of facing D-Lo. He begins to get into Brown's head saying that the only reason Jeff accepted the challenge for tonight was to capitalize on the former Intercontinental / European Champion when he's tired.

The artist formerly known as Disco goes on to trash Jarrett and tells Brown that he (as the leader of S.E.X.) has the power to grant him a title match and can make it happen next week. The catch is that S.E.X. will be in Brown's corner and WHEN he wins the title, he must join Sports Entertainment Xtreme. D-Lo accepts and the match is on for next Wednesday.

Flair VS. Rhodes

No it's not 1986! But it is Flair and Rhodes once again, and this time it's a Bunkhouse Match (more accurately - the "wear your crappiest jeans and tattered old plaid shirt while swinging a cowbell until it hits someone in the nose" match).

Ric's kid comes to the ring carrying his dad's replica NWA World Title that he's been carrying for the last few weeks. Dusty hits the ring and just beats on young David. Squashy Squashy.

After 3 or 4 minutes Rhodes nailed Flair in the face with a traditional bunkhouse match foreign object, "Eeeeefff yooooou weeeeeeell". Dusty makes the pin and heads directly to the "pay-winda". Do not pass go, do not return to TNA.

WINNER: Dusty Rhodes

Goldylocks is backstage and interviews America's Most Wanted or more specifically Chris Harris. Goldy is asking why Harris requested a singles match tonight. He goes on a rant about how it isn't a big issue and AMW is still the top team in the business. He just needs to prove something to himself. Once again Harris is showing flashes of a heel turn as he did back in August / September when the angle was that the partners were just too different and couldn't get along.

Kid Kash and Trinity VS. The Amazing Red and Alexis Laree

Most fans remember Kash from ECW, but many have not yet had the opportunity to watch Red in action. He is pure excitement. He's a high spot specialist who at times seems to actually defy gravity and physics.

Tenay makes mention that Laree was trained by Ricky Steamboat and Dory Funk Jr. She looks incredibly nervous in her first "real" match on pay per view.

The match went back and forth, but once again Red and Kash didn't seem to mesh all that well when they faced off. There seem to be some chemistry issues between these two. When either man has been in the ring with anyone else, the matches have been gold. Against each other they have left something to be desired.

The finish came when The Amazing One didn't quite nail the "Infra-Red" sunset flip/ power bomb off the top rope. When both men were down, Trinity hit a nice moonsault on Alexis for the win.

WINNER: Trinity and Kid Kash

Trinity posed after the win and Kash seemed very unimpressed. He grabbed his title and left her there to finish posing.

"Wildcat" Chris Harris VS. D-Lo Brown

Both men move very quickly to start this one off and go through several series of standing switches and reversals. Harris displayed some power by holding Brown up in a vertical suplex for what seemed like an eternity.

D-Lo attempts to his Chris Harris's finisher "The Catatonic" but Harris reverses nicely into a double arm DDT. At one point both men and the ref were down when Glen Gilberti showed up and hit Harris with a Diamond cutter. Brown rolled on The Wildcat to pick up the win. Kudos to Harris. I haven't been a fan of his up until now, but this was clearly his best TNA performance to date.

WINNER: D-Lo Brown

Mike Tenay and Don West recap Jarrett's guitar shot on Watts from earlier in the evening. West blows a gasket promoting a "MAJOR" announcement on next week's show regarding NASCAR. HeeeeeHaw. And now we go to our main event.

When Sandman is introduced he downs a beer and goes to one of his old ECW gimmicks where he crushed the can against his head until he bled.

West: "Well we always said he beats to a different drum". Whatever Don.

Saturn appears to be in good shape and even more heavily tattooed than he was during his WWA stint just a couple short months ago. Unfortunately he hasn't regained any of his pre-WWE magic and still appears to wander slowly through the ring and take long rests. He did throw a ton of T-bone suplexes, but other than that didn't add very much to the program.

Update: The Harris Brothers STILL stink. No news there. They are absolutely painful to watch. I almost feel sorry for Daniels and Skipper. There was a cut away where Sandman (outside the ring) was choking one of the twins with a Singapore cane ñ but the big baldy was caught on camera turning his head right around and talking calmly to the Sandman. Probably something like, "Did you save a can for me?" or "Dang, rasslin's hard, ain't it".

As expected there was plenty of juice in this one. I believe everyone bled except Saturn. There were a couple of very nice spots by the tag team champions, but that's about it for redeeming qualities here.

The match ended when Ron Killings (who apparently turned heel last week when he jumped his pal Jarrett) came to the ring with the 6'10" 500 pounder formerly known as Mabel / Viscera. They attack S.E.X. Mabel hit a gigantic (duh) sit out power bomb on Daniels allowing Perry Saturn to pick up the win.

WINNERS: Saturn, Sandman, Lee and Slash

After the match Gilberti and other members of S.E.X. crashed the ring to attack the Church. A huge brawl ensues and eventually D-Lo and Jeff Jarrett make their way back to the ring. They scream at each other then turn away. That's when babyface Double J decided to clobber Brown with a chair shot to the head. We fade to black. Goodnight folks - tip your waitress and try the veal.

ANALYSIS:

WAY too much babbling and yapping this week. I assure you folks, this isn't what TNA has been all about, and quite frankly I'm somewhat surprised by this weeks installment. The first match of the night between Styles and Sanders turned out to be the best. Chris Harris turned in a very respectable performance and made a new fan out of this viewer.

Here's hoping that the Jarretts and russo get their act together backstage and next week's program resembles more of what TNA fans have become accustomed to.

OVERALL RATING: 3.5 out of 10

Donnie Abreu has been a wrestling journalist for eight years and is the co-founder of IceCold Media (http://www.icecoldmedia.com). Visit IceCold Media for all your custom media design needs. Mention that you read Donnie's column on SLAM! and receive a 20% discount!